Taffy Brodesser-AknerRezensionen

The Fletchers are Long Island royalty, living on a large estate and reaping the rewards of owning a suspect styrofoam factory built on an equally suspect family history dating back to the 1940s. When Carl Fletcher gets kidnapped in his driveway one morning in 1980, it sets the family on a path of inherited trauma and dysfunction that Taffy Brodesser-Akner explores in her second novel, Long Island Compromise. The overriding element of the book is Brodesser-Akner’s style which bombards readers with episodes of stream-of-consciousness, endless lists, and other sometimes exhausting stylistic choices. Buried in the onslaught of words there are laugh-out-loud moments, deep exploration of family, trauma, wealth, and Jewishness. Readers who enjoy her writing and can wade through the length will enjoy Long Island Compromise.½

A Polish Jewish immigrant escaping the Holocaust comes to New York where he eventually accumulates wealth by opening a factory. When he dies suddenly, his son, Carl is called back to the family compound on Long Island to run the business. In 1980, Carl is kidnapped and held for $200,000 ransom which is paid. The kidnapping haunts Carl for the rest of his life, as well as affecting his three children, Nathan, Beamer, and the soon to be born Jenny. And thus the novel embarks on recounting the lives of the siblings, as well as those of the generations that came before, the after effects of the kidnapping and the guiding influences of their wealth.

Cleverly written with touches of wit, the story gets mired down at times with almost a stream of consciousness accounting of their lives and in particular their self loathing. Both historical and contemporary, it is a long novel (almost 500 pages) that touches on American Jewishness, the privilege of wealth, inherited trauma, self sabotaging , family dysfunction, women’s roles. There is a bit of a fairy tale ending and it will be interesting to see what readers think of it. I think this is a book that many will love and about which others will be less enamored.

Thanks to #Netgalley and #randomhouse for the DRC.

The first thing you'll notice is that Fleishman does not exactly appear to be in trouble as the book opens. Toby Fleishman, successful New York City doctor, early forties, is recently separated, and enjoying the myriad sexual opportunities offered to him through online dating apps. Granted, he has some of the typical difficulties with his kids, portrayed particularly amusingly through his tween daughter Hannah:

"Hannah snarled at him that he'd chosen the wrong outfit, that the leggings were for tomorrow, and so he held up her tiny red shorts and she swiped them out of his hands with the disgust of a person who was not committed to any consideration of scale when it came to emotional display."

The reader learns about Toby's marriage to Rachel, and the disappointments he had with their relationship that led to the marriage breaking up. Rachel is a talent agent who owns her own agency, working long hours and, he feels, neglecting Toby and the kids, as the book carefully notes that Rachel earns about 15 times the salary of Toby, who is on a mere $250,000 a year. Toby's resentment comes through strongly:

"Rachel knew how to work. She liked working. It made sense to her. It bent to her will and her sense of logic. Motherhood was too hard. The kids were not deferential to her like her employees. They didn't brook her temper with the desperation and co-dependence that, say, Simone, her assistant, did. That was the big difference between them, Rachel. He didn't see their children as a burden, Rachel. He didn't see them as endless pits of need, Rachel. He liked them, Rachel."

Later in the novel however, you come across a shift taking place. The novel is being told from the perspective of a college friend of Toby's, Elizabeth. She is a writer who used to work at a men's magazine. She tells us:

"That was what I knew for sure, that this was the only way to get someone to listen to a woman - to tell her story through a man; Trojan horse yourself into a man, and people would give a shit about you. So I wrote heartfelt stories about their lives, extrapolating from what they gave me and running with what I already knew from being human. They sent me texts and flowers that told me I really understood them in a way that no one had before, and I realized that all humans are essentially the same, but only some of us, the men, were truly allowed to be that without apology. The men's humanity was sexy and complicated; ours (mine) was to be kept in the dark at the bottom of the story and was only interesting in the service of the man's humanity."

And the reader realizes that Brodesser-Akner is telling us the complicated story of Rachel's humanity through Toby's story. The Fleishman in trouble is not really Toby; it is Rachel. What about Rachel. Do you want to know about her and her story?

Fleishman Is in Trouble is a smart novel that gives the reader a lot to think about by the end, but it is also a challenging read. It skewers its characters and their wealthy social set, making it more difficult to identify with any of them, be it Toby or Rachel, but it also critiques the social conditions that have led these characters there. Anger is a common theme, both of the characters, and by the end, clearly of the author herself. She is angry that women are told they are the equal of men, yet that is evidently never true, not really, and women will be punished for their choices whatever those choices are. Given the attention this novel has attracted, she has indeed hit a collective nerve.

It's hard to believe that Taffy Brodesser-Akner's FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE is her first novel, because it's just so damn GOOD! I mean, from page one it so totally sucked me in, which is probably a good description, because her style is very (Philip)Roth-ian, or Roth-esque, or whatever. Meaning there's lots of sex, of all kinds. Like she spent her younger years peering over Roth's shoulder as he wrote some of his juiciest old-white-guy material. Because she certainly knows Roth, who even gets a token mention, as one of the authors (along with Bellow) that her protagonist, Dr Toby Fleishman, imagined his ideal woman might be reading when he would first meet her. Which didn't happen, of course. Instead he met Rachel, fell in love and married her. And now, fifteen years and two kids later, their marriage is almost over. They are separated. She got everything. He gets the kids every other weekend. The Fleishmans are in trouble. Yes, both of them. Because this is a book about the dissolution of a marriage, about how hard it is to stay in love, about differing goals and dreams and ambitions, about parenting by the seat of your pants, social climbing, and about starting over, at forty-one, in the age of smart phones and dating apps - and pornographic pics sent from interested women. Toby is wallowing in all of this fresh fleish, er, flesh, and still trying to be a responsible father to his eleven year-old daughter, Hannah, who is already feeling prepubescent pangs of puppy love, and sensitive nine year-old Solly.

So yeah, initially you think this story is all about Toby, with an omniscient narrator. Then suddenly this narrator becomes Libby, Toby's longtime friend from college, who might have been his girlfriend, except for the fact that Toby is only five foot four, a disadvantage he is all too aware of. Toby and Libby and Seth, still a libertine bachelor, were a tight threesome in college, and have stayed in touch intermittently. Libby, we learn, married with children, has given up her job as a writer for a men's magazine to be a stay-at-home mom. Discontented, she wants to be a writer, but, after some false starts, she discovers -

"My voice only came alive when I was talking about someone else; my ability to see the truth and to extrapolate human emotion based on what I saw and was told didn't extend to myself.

Hence, voila! She becomes the voice of Toby's story and Rachel's, and Seth's. And her story is dropped in there too, eventually. It's complicated. And much of Libby's discontent comes from her realization that -

"There were so many ways of being a woman in the world, but all of them still rendered her just a woman, which is to say: a target."

Toby's story - and Rachel's too - as Libby presents them, are sad and painful, and hard to look away from. And the effects on the children are equally tragic. Because all the Fleishmans are in trouble. Marriage is hard, but separation and divorce are even harder.

I've read a lot of Philip Roth over the years, and so, apparently, has Brodesser-Akner. One of my favorite Roth novels is his first, the often overlooked coming-of-age LETTING GO. It is very similar to this book in that it alternates between an omniscient narrator and a first-person in the voice of protagonist Gabe Wallach. And a major female character in LETTING GO, is named Libby, a married woman Gabe is more than a little in love with. So yeah, I suspect Taffy Brodesser-Akner is very much a student of Philip Roth's work, and, as a result, she has crafted a multi-faceted masterpiece on the pleasures and perils of men and women falling in love and out of love, marriage and divorce, lust and longing and so many other things. I loved this book. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

I don’t know how I should rate this.

I suppose at times it’s amusing but mostly it’s bleak and depressing and kind of disgusting. It’s uncomfortable living through other people’s mid-life crisis!

At first I thought we were supposed to be rooting for Toby but by the end I certainly wasn’t and our mysterious narrator was a real downer too. Who knew Rachel would be the most sympathetic one of all?

Glad I don’t hate my life as much as these characters hate theirs.

Messy and smart.

Author Taffy (did her parents really name her Taffy?) Brodesser-Akner has a very salty tongue, which probably suggests to me that if we became friends, the friendship wouldn’t last very long.

But her humorous novel, “Fleishman is in Trouble” I must admit made me laugh out loud. There are just too many things in the marriage of Toby and Rachel that I can relate to.

What really touched me — and I hope I’m not spoiling this — are the very real differences in how the partners see each other, how they interpret their marriage, and what they hope for themselves.

Although there are many allusions to #MeToo I don’t consider this a MeToo book but a philosophical meditation on the means of society to shape our expectations of life.I tend to view such stories as a chapter in the war between complexity (life giving) and entropy (life destroying), what older writers might have seen as the struggle between good and evil, but which I don’t believe in anymore.

Rachel is a busy bee trying very hard not to let the forces of entropy swallow her whole, as in her upbringing by a grandmother who showed her no affection. She envied the family Toby grew up in which, while smothering, at least gave focus to one’s affections.

Fleishman may be in trouble, but its Rachel’s suffering that gives shape to this story.

And Brodesser-Acker’s skillful shifting of the narration makes the story consuming.

This was so well written. Just wow. I'll have to read this one again.

I confess: I didn't really read this whole book. I watched the TV show and then I skimmed the book to see if there were any major differences. Rachel's nervous breakdown is more dramatic in the book (she gets on a plane to LA and then flies right back!), but overall it seems like the show is a super faithful adaptation.

There is so much food for thought in this story. I got my friend to watch the show and we talked about Rachel for over an hour. If Rachel's story is a cautionary tale, for me it's about appreciating real friends. So sad to be all alone in the world.

The humor in Fleishman Is in Trouble is biting and perspective. She describes an attorney’s office décor as “eighties-era mortuary”. Or the detail of the attorney – “looked like she’d been crushed in the trash compactor in Star Wars.” As you read the novel about the dissolution of a marriage you flip between being disgusted with the characters and then barely liking them. In the midst of the separation of Toby and Rachel, Rachel disappears and propels the plot to a combination of mystery and cathartic change. Yet the novel uses a strange device of being told from the point of view of Elizabeth, a old friend of Toby. It is never clear as to why her perspective is required. A head scratcher but at least a well written one.

This book read slow for me (might be the times though to be honest), but I found it to be very insightful. It started out with a lot of wit; my initial impression was that the book was lampooning rich New Yorkers. But it morphed into something else . . .a diatribe on marriage, feminism, the dissatisfaction of modern living where we have it all materially and yet somehow feel unfulfilled.

The audience for this book feels more narrow to me which might explain why the reviews are all over the place. You'll definitely appreciate it more if you are from New York, if you grew up as part of the first or second wave of feminism, if you are Jewish, if you are female, and if you have experience with divorce (child of or have been through it). I'm basically all of those things, and I think this book could have easily been five stars if it was just edited a bit more tightly.

There were aspects of the structure I really liked and others I was not excited about. First, the narrator is a college friend of the protagonist. I don't know - - why is that necessary? I didn't feel like it really added much to the story, but it did permit for an ending that some will find overly explanatory and others will love. Normally, I don't like when an author feels a need to explain a book, but there were some great insights in this final chapter that I did appreciate for taking the reader beyond the plot. What I really did like was how the reader was shown the male and female perspectives of the exact same marriage, and how both were simultaneously selfish and somehow also reasonable views . . .no one was really the villain and certainly no one was the hero. These people aren't likable, but they are real. Real is what most people are - - a combination of good and bad, and caring and uncaring, and selfish and generous, and funny and boring. We might not see all that, but when you get very close to someone, then you have a recognition that we are not all one thing. I felt this book really understood that, and kudos to the author for attempting to reveal that in her work.

2.5 - Those who are bothered by language and raunchiness won't enjoy this one at all. Don't even consider picking it up - you'll be put off almost right away. Heck, there are a lot of reasons you might not enjoy it, actually. The author's technique of having a periphery character tell the "main" character's story and the perspective shift at the end didn't work well for me. Listening to the audio book, it took me longer than it should have to understand what what happening with the perspective shifts - I think that type of thing is a little harder to track in audio format. This was a LONG ramble about a relationship from one perspective, slowly revealing a "hidden" agenda. A few powerful and resonant lines at the end don't really make up for the slog for me.

Really liked the book to start with, tremendously funny. Started getting increasingly unsettled by it, and I didn’t love the final quarter of it. I suspect my Y chromosome is the problem here. But well worth reading.

I have a lot of feelings about this book.

First of all it is just the type of book that I like best. It is chunky - its a deep dive into people's lives. I didnt have a problem reading it or continuing on with it. So in that way it was successful.

But -- I had trouble liking any of the characters. i feel like I was supposed to have some kind of revelatory compassion for one of them - but that didn't happen. There was also this simmering hatred (guilt?) regarding stay at home moms that it felt like she was trying to be jokey about but came off kind of filled with rage.

Also, the way marriage is looked at is really sad. It seems like no one has even a basic friendship with their partner. It's hard and terrible to imagine how you could be surrounded by people who screwed up that basic element of partnership so much.

I found the extra narrator really ripped me out of the story everytime she stepped into focus. I honestly can not understand that choice. It is so uneven and jarring the way it is used. I feel like an editor really failed the author on letting that stand the way it did.

I don't know if the author is a fan of Tom Perrotta but a lot of the subject matter in this book felt Perrotta-esque to me. Sandly though, the treatment and the handling lacked Perrotta's nuance and humor.

I haven't watched the tv adaptation yet but I am curious enough that I will probably check it out.½

I really don't know how to feel about this book. On the one hand, I recognize that this is a "good" book. I understand all the praise it's received from the powers that be. On the other hand, I guess I just didn't like it very much? The writing is excellent and it's full of great lines and insights, but it all just felt like a little too much. It seemed like the author took every idea she ever had about marriage, motherhood, sexism, love, lust, middle age, etc. and put it all in this one book. I felt exhausted reading it, and I was so relieved to finally finish it. I probably would have quit on it by page 50 or so if it wasn't on the Tournament of Books, but at the same time I don't necessarily regret reading it. I don't think I've ever been so confounded by a book before, so that's saying something at least.

I did not like this book at all, although I did care about the characters. There was so much boring detail and repetition. The blurbs and references to the book were so positive I plowed through it expecting great illuminations which did not materialize.

Sexism Illustrated

“Isms” can be blatant, in-your-face insulting and dispiriting, and even the “ism” practitioner, hopefully, can recognize these. For example, you can easily spot racism and sexism when someone shouts disparaging epithets at you. Of course, rarely does it work this way with “isms” like these. These people express subtly while disclaiming them as any attack on your race or sex; it must be you, your problem. In her debut novel Fleishman Is in Trouble, Taffy Brodesser-Akner builds an entire novel involving three principal characters around sexism, how it’s practiced and how it effects women. Which might come as a surprise, because the title implies the novel is about a man. It is for its first two-thirds, to illustrate sexism in action. Yes, the novel is about more, about a troubled marriage of a successful liver doctor, Toby Fleishman, and an enterprising celebrity agent, Rachel Fleishman, and their friend, a former magazine writer, now New Jersey housewife, Libby, who narrates the story, and then inserts herself into it.

Toby Fleishman, a successful hepatologist at a large New York City hospital, has just separated from his wife of fifteen years. He enjoys and derives his professional satisfaction from working with patients. That’s the extent of his ambition. Now separated, he finds himself navigating the new world of dating women in his age group, the mid-forties. Libby relates his story as he has told it to her during his short period of separation. This includes how Rachel never had time for him, never had time for their two children, Hanna and Solly, how she never appreciated that he adjusted his schedule to always be home at 5:30 to relieve the nanny and care for the children or how he prepared the meals. He especially gripes that she’s pushy, that she constantly drove him to move up, to take a bigger job in the hospital, to make more money, to do essentially as she is doing. Then she disappears for a few weeks, precipitating a crisis in his life and the household. All he wanted was a normal wife, and what he got was a crazy one, he laments regularly.

We readers hear this for two-thirds of the novel. At first, we feel sympathetic to Toby. What more could a woman want? Here’s a man who colleagues regard as top in his field. Here’s a man who rejiggers his busy life to accommodate her aspirations. What does he get for it? A wife who won’t listen to, who is so absorbed in her work running a very successfully agency that she has no time for anything else. And a woman who earns the big bucks that pay for all the amenities he himself enjoys. After a while, you begin to see through the Toby façade and you suspect there’s more to this story than just a crazy woman.

At this point, Libby finally runs into Rachel and finds her a wreck, in the midst of a whopper of a nervous breakdown. Here we get Rachel’s side of the various incidents Toby carped about to Libby. And here we learn about the many ways life has treated her badly, from a loveless upbringing, to sexism at her former agency, to Toby not realizing and not trying to realize all that she accomplished and what she contributed to the household, all the things she did behind the scenes unnoticed by him, so absorbed in himself and his career as he was. Obviously, as the old movie line goes, a failure to communicate. But more, which Brodesser-Akner illustrates powerfully by making the start of the novel about Toby and then turning it around so we see all the forces working against women who might have even a modicum of ambition, all done unconsciously by Toby and society.

Sexism Illustrated

“Isms” can be blatant, in-your-face insulting and dispiriting, and even the “ism” practitioner, hopefully, can recognize these. For example, you can easily spot racism and sexism when someone shouts disparaging epithets at you. Of course, rarely does it work this way with “isms” like these. These people express subtly while disclaiming them as any attack on your race or sex; it must be you, your problem. In her debut novel Fleishman Is in Trouble, Taffy Brodesser-Akner builds an entire novel involving three principal characters around sexism, how it’s practiced and how it effects women. Which might come as a surprise, because the title implies the novel is about a man. It is for its first two-thirds, to illustrate sexism in action. Yes, the novel is about more, about a troubled marriage of a successful liver doctor, Toby Fleishman, and an enterprising celebrity agent, Rachel Fleishman, and their friend, a former magazine writer, now New Jersey housewife, Libby, who narrates the story, and then inserts herself into it.

Toby Fleishman, a successful hepatologist at a large New York City hospital, has just separated from his wife of fifteen years. He enjoys and derives his professional satisfaction from working with patients. That’s the extent of his ambition. Now separated, he finds himself navigating the new world of dating women in his age group, the mid-forties. Libby relates his story as he has told it to her during his short period of separation. This includes how Rachel never had time for him, never had time for their two children, Hanna and Solly, how she never appreciated that he adjusted his schedule to always be home at 5:30 to relieve the nanny and care for the children or how he prepared the meals. He especially gripes that she’s pushy, that she constantly drove him to move up, to take a bigger job in the hospital, to make more money, to do essentially as she is doing. Then she disappears for a few weeks, precipitating a crisis in his life and the household. All he wanted was a normal wife, and what he got was a crazy one, he laments regularly.

We readers hear this for two-thirds of the novel. At first, we feel sympathetic to Toby. What more could a woman want? Here’s a man who colleagues regard as top in his field. Here’s a man who rejiggers his busy life to accommodate her aspirations. What does he get for it? A wife who won’t listen to, who is so absorbed in her work running a very successfully agency that she has no time for anything else. And a woman who earns the big bucks that pay for all the amenities he himself enjoys. After a while, you begin to see through the Toby façade and you suspect there’s more to this story than just a crazy woman.

At this point, Libby finally runs into Rachel and finds her a wreck, in the midst of a whopper of a nervous breakdown. Here we get Rachel’s side of the various incidents Toby carped about to Libby. And here we learn about the many ways life has treated her badly, from a loveless upbringing, to sexism at her former agency, to Toby not realizing and not trying to realize all that she accomplished and what she contributed to the household, all the things she did behind the scenes unnoticed by him, so absorbed in himself and his career as he was. Obviously, as the old movie line goes, a failure to communicate. But more, which Brodesser-Akner illustrates powerfully by making the start of the novel about Toby and then turning it around so we see all the forces working against women who might have even a modicum of ambition, all done unconsciously by Toby and society.

I don't normally read fiction and I rarely read fiction written by women. However I saw this book listed on so many “Best of 2019” book lists that I wanted to read it. I am very glad that I did. It was a very entertaining story from the first page till the end. The story centered around a man recently separated with two kids trying to figure out the rest of his life. The story starts with his ex-wife literally disappearing and leaving him with the care of his two kids. He also has to balance his career as a doctor around the care of his children and his now burgeoning social life.

It’s not a story unfamilar with most divorces. Guilt, revenge, hate and regrets are all incorporated into the story, as well as plenty of sex and adultery.

The story recounts his youth and his early beginnings with his ex-wife. The reader will follow the deterioration of his marriage plus the financial and career challenges associated with the failing marriage. It's a literary soap opera – – stories within stories.

The kicker at the end is the reappearance of the missing ex-wife. She too has a story to tell and the author balances her story against that of her ex-husband.

This is the author’s first book. It appears she has left a cliffhanger for a follow up book. I will be interested in reading that.

A fantastic novel about divorce told from differing points of view.

I really enjoyed this book. The writing style, the pace, the wit and intelligence worked for me. It was easy to tell that the author was Libby, the narrator. However, I would have preferred if she left her personal animosities out of the story. Still, a very worthwhile read and I look forward to more from Akner.

I couldn't finish. This book was possibly written to make middle aged divorced men believe that there are legions of women of all ages just waiting to have sex with them once they connect via hook-up apps. Maybe there are. It was too difficult to slog though the descriptions for me to really care.

In keeping with the title of this book, I may be about to get "in trouble." I really enjoyed almost all of this book and found it to be an incredible mixture of funny, poignant, and insightful. But. You knew there was a but coming didn't you. Without going into the plot or giving any spoilers (a reminder, this is a NO SPOILER zone), I found the final section of the book to be troublesome. I hope that it was presented just to be one character's view of things but the impression it left me with was way too much excuse making. In the end I think that people make choices and especially when they are people of means if they choose to chase status and money (but money mainly so it can buy status), then the "hole it bored in you when you were lying to yourself" is entirely on you. As one of the Fleishman characters notes in his role as a doctor, "[r]ich patients couldn’t believe that money couldn’t help, that their positions and club memberships and status couldn’t help." One of the younger characters really nails it with the observation that "[m]aybe nothing is making them act that way but themselves." But I probably shouldn't have lead with my reservations, I truly did enjoy this book a lot. It was just my final taste was a bit off. I did appreciate the keen eye it aimed on the shallowness of our current civilization. At one point someone notes that "[s]he was typing on her phone because her phone was actually the love of her life." Don't we all know those people? And in the end your phone and your social media presence isn't really much of a comfort. This is a very good book and one that I think can spark a lot of discussions.

I don't mind novels about entitled rich people and their problems. Occasionally, they turn me into a screeching Marxist, but the prevailing emotion is less jealousy and more a smug relief that I'm middle class and have to deal with none of this. I am under no obligation to indulge finance whizzes and pretend that they have any social utility. So Taffy Brodesser-Akner's debut novel didn't bother me on that score. She's not really expecting us to feel sorry for the poor benighted rich. Woe is Toby Fleishman, who only makes $285K a year and had to rely on his soon-to-be ex-wife to keep him in the style to which he had become accustomed.

I love Brodesser-Akner's magazine journalism, and she's certainly a fine writer. The book is funny and she's is familiar with the world she's skewering--99% of the details are spot on. (Although I wish a woman who had spent most of her childhood as an Orthodox Jew would know that tallitot are not worn at evening services!)

But I wasn't sure how to feel about her novel or its characters. It's clear from the outset that Toby, no matter what he wants to think about himself, isn't entirely sympathetic. I didn't feel suckered into having faith in a character who turned out to be a villain, which he isn't exactly. The setup of the novel is also tricky: it appears to be a third person (primarily from Toby's point of view), but then there's asides from the first person narrator, an old friend of Toby's from college. I think the counterpoint and memories Libby offers added a lot of context and depth, but as a reading experience it wasn't precisely smooth, and I had to wonder how I, the reader, was supposed to know everything in the third person narration.

--- VERY MILD SPOILERS AHEAD ---

Eventually, the payoff is that we get Rachel's point of view. It's been described as something of a reversal, but I don't think it's that, either. As a woman, I certainly sympathized with a lot of what was said here, but it's less a clear cut flip and more a giant muddying of the waters. It's certainly realistic, but it didn't necessarily cause me to reevaluate everything that had previously taken place. That was in part because there was some foreshadowing, but also because hearing all of Rachel's internal explanations for her motivations and actions didn't really soften her that much--in the context of the whole rich people's problems setup, part of the issue was her motivations and goals. It wasn't something I could easily sympathize with. There was a sense that Brodesser-Akner wanted readers to sympathize with Rachel as a stand in for women and mothers in general, but she isn't. The problem with rich people problems is that they aren't exactly our problems.

This book is filled with loathsome characters. The more I listened, the more I regretted the time I lost listening. I wish I could have heard the other side of the story but I just can't take any more of these spoiled privileged brats whining. Dnf.

I am editing this to say that the writing in the book itself is quite good and it is very readable. I just could not find one character to identify with and/or root for.